Telecommunications systems, cable television systems and data communication networks use optical networks to rapidly convey large amounts of information between remote points. In an optical network, information is conveyed in the form of optical signals through optical fibers. Optical fibers are thin strands of glass capable of transmitting the signals over long distances with very low loss.
Optical networks often employ wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to increase transmission capacity. In a WDM network, a number of optical channels are carried in each fiber at disparate wavelengths. Network capacity is based on the number of wavelengths, or channels, in each fiber and the bandwidth, or size of the channels.
The optical channels may be one or more of OC-48 channels having a frequency bandwidth of 50 gigahertz (GHz), OC-192 channels having a frequency bandwidth of 100 GHz, OC-768 channels having a frequency bandwidth of 200 GHz, and the like. The channels are each data modulated, frequency adjusted and/or filtered based on a fixed bandwidth and a specified frequency. The utilization of transmission resources in each channel varies over time depending on channel data rates. Unused channel capacity is wasted and limits traffic that can be carried by the network.